I got back on the horse today!

Glad you got back out there.

That is, indeed, one hairy looking corner.  Did you go down into the metal rail and concrete stanchions?  Yikes...

Hope you're able to get back to running and swimming soon!

Matt

Glad you are getting back out there but be careful! Maybe you should stick with the trainer for a while .

I'm glad you were able to get back out there!  That looks like it could have happened to anybody.  Hope you are healing physically and mentally.

Thanks!   No I didn't hit the railing, thank god.  That's there to prevent people from going down the 12 foot embankment into the river, which would be even worse. Here's a closer view of the actual turn; it's a sweeper of about 120 degrees total, with the entry just a bit sharper (as you see in the picture above) then getting shallower through the rest of the turn. 

I crashed just a bit past the yellow arrow on the right hand side of the trail (the photo is in the direction I was going).  My right wheel slid out and boom I went backwards hard onto my left shoulder.  I was still on the aerobars when I hit the ground.  I proved it's impossible to for me to take this turn at 18mph on the aerobars on a tri bike with race tires.  Not paying attention, on auto-pilot. 

Now that I look at the picture, it's possible the yellow arrow itself had something to do with my crash.  Pavement paint is well known to be slipperier when wet than the asphalt pavement itself. Perhaps that's yet one more factor in my crash besides speed and conditions.  Still it was 100% my fault.

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I'm glad to see you out riding and revisiting the scene.

Hope you get good news from your doc next month so you can get back to doing more.

Yes it's a relief to be riding again. And it was just like riding a bike - everything felt normal, although I think I may have been little-old-lady slow on some of the turns.

It's likely the one you're thinking of - locals know this is the turn with all the ducks and chickens.  This is the turn on the Sammamish River Trail (SRT) just before 9 3/4 mark.  The road above is 102nd, and just past that is the gravel parking lot of the Sammamish River Park.  It's a tight and blind turn; in the first picture above you can see a mirror on a pole near my bike.  That mirror lets us see if someone is coming around the corner.

Yes I did have surgical correction because I had no real choice - a butterfly break with comminution (fragmentation around the site) has essentially zero chance of healing well without surgery. The plate has 8 screws, 4 on each side of the break. The idea is to stabilize the bone so the break site can heal; to help with that I had to wear a sling for 9 weeks which ended about 2 weeks ago. That checkup went well and the bone is healing well enough; one fragment has fallen slightly out of place but that's OK. I just now can feel a weird indent in the front of the collarbone where the piece used to be. :-)  In the scheme oft things that's not bad at all.  I have a good chance of having 100% range of motion and no long term impact. 

I will likely keep the plate forever; they are not designed for removal but they can be.  That would be a second surgery and then my bone has 8 holes that need to heal just like 8 little breaks.  So removal would be something of a big deal all by itself.

And yes, it's so easy to be distracted. All the little things add up. For me it was "rainy day + very familiar with the trail + fiddled with derailleur minutes before + headphones + second loop of the day past that exact spot + sharp turn + painted arrow on ground = crash"  Perhaps you could subtract just a few of those and I wouldn't have crashed.  The biggest factor was the derailleur adjustment a quarter mile earlier. That's what I was thinking about.